Page 31 of Lady Like

“Now?” Emily throws a pillow from the settee, which Harry bats out of the air, nearly sending it sailing into the fire. “This very moment? You are in a play this very moment and you neglected to tell me?”

“Well not this very moment, as I’m sitting in your cousin’s parlor eating cake.”

“Do not misunderstand me!”

Emily watches as Harry scrapes her fork around the edge of her empty plate.

Violet and Martin were already abed when they arrived and the staff gone home, so Emily had suggested they nest in the formal parlor rather than the drawing rooms adjacent to Violet’s bedroom.

The fire there was still high enough to be restoked, and Martin’s liquor cabinet unlocked.

Harry had admired its contents when they arrived, but they haven’t poured any.

Instead, Emily had brought them two slices of cake from tea on mismatched saucers from the kitchen, which they’ve been eating slowly in front of the fire.

And now, improbably, here is Harry, with her jacket off and her feet pulled up under her, eating cake off Emily’s cousin’s china.

It feels like seeing a tiger at a tea party, a strange disjunction of person and place.

Emily had feared as soon as she offered the invitation that she had made a mistake.

Even if Harry accepted, surely she’d be bored within ten minutes of arriving.

What did she have to offer by way of entertainment, particularly when the alternative was the shine of a pleasure garden?

But not only is Harry here, she is relaxed and smiling and shows no signs of searching for a flimsy excuse to go.

Emily leans backward on the settee, bare feet burrowed in between the cushions.

The unladylike posture makes her feel hedonistic.

She wants to stretch across all three cushions, undo her hair from its arrangement, and drop her head back over the arm so it falls into long cascades.

She wants to know Harry is watching her without looking.

She wants to feel her gaze hot as the fire.

Harry retrieves the errant pillow and shoves it under the chair in which she’s reclining. “Where did you think I was going every night?”

“I thought you were rehearsing. All you ever said was that you were needed at the theater!” Emily throws a second pillow at her, though it falls short and lands between them.

“I assumed if you were in a production that was playing on stage at this very moment, you’d have told me so I could come see it. ”

Harry sets her plate on the side table, then leans forward with her elbows on her knees. “Miss Sergeant, you may not under any circumstances come see my play.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s horrible. I’m horrible. My troupe exclusively performs horrible theater.”

“Surely you exaggerate.”

“You’d think otherwise if you had seen our balletic reimagining of the St. Crispin’s Day speech in Henry V. ”

“There are songs?”

“Oh they must have songs—it’s the way we get around the drama bans.”

“Who did you play in the Henriad?”

“Hal, obviously. The dashing prince-rake turned great king of England.”

“Is that why Collin calls you Hal? Since it’s a diminutive of Henry, as is Harry?”

“Got it in one.”

Emily settles back into the settee again. Exhaustion is creeping up on her, but for now, it only serves to make her feel loose and silly, and she asks before she can stop herself, “Could I call you Hal?”

“You can call me anything,” Harry replies with a sideways smile, and Emily feels her heart stutter.

She looks down quickly, dragging a finger around the edge of her plate to pick up the crumbs. Even though she has passed most days of the past month with Harry, so much time that it almost felt silly to still call her Miss Lockhart, it’s too much to use her family’s pet name.

“I should like to call you Harry,” Emily says, surprised by the giddy shudder that goes through her when she says the name aloud.

It strikes her tongue like a bud of poppy, and she feels suddenly so intoxicated it frightens her, so she adds quickly, “But you may continue to refer to me as Miss Sergeant.”

Harry sketches a bow. “As you wish.”

Emily puts her finger between her lips, sucking crumbs off it. Harry watches her, teeth pressed into her bottom lip.

“Why carry on performing if it’s so terrible?” Emily asks.

“I have to earn a living somehow and I’m no good at anything else.”

“You’re good at lots of things,” Emily protests.

“Such as?”

“You’re charming and clever and you ride horses and know so many references. You’re thoughtful. You’re fashionable.”

“Am I?” Harry interrupts. “Or do I simply own a lot of brocade coats?”

Emily rolls her eyes. “You could find a better company.”

“Well, the Palace is all Sapphists, which is nice.”

“What does that mean?”

“What does what mean?”

“Sapphists. Is that a kind of thespian?”

“No it’s…” Harry coughs and rubs the back of her neck, and when she glances around, Emily has the sense she’s searching for a candle to tip in hopes a small fire might divert the subject. “It’s a reference to Sappho, the Greek poetess.”

“I’ve never heard of her.”

“I can’t imagine you would have.” Harry presses the tips of her fingers together, hands between her knees. “She’s been largely bowdlerized by modern censors, as she had a bit of a fondness for writing erotically about other women.”

Emily looks down quickly at her hands. The crescents of her nails are dotted with cake crumbs. “Oh.”

A moment of silence between them. The cushions rustle as Harry shifts in her chair, and for a moment, Emily wonders wildly if Harry is about to close the space between them and take her hand. But then she says, “Miss Sergeant. You know I couple with women, don’t you?”

Emily isn’t sure if the ripple of surprise that goes through her is because of the confession, or because she isn’t more shocked by it.

She feels it in her thighs. Her hips. An illicit twinge in both body and soul.

She’s heard sodomy and such debauchery obliquely referenced in church, but never met a Sapphist before.

Sapphist. The word feels slippery and soft as silk, and she finds herself thinking of a gaggle of young women she and Violet had passed that morning at Hyde Park sharing sweets.

Two of them had reached inside the bag at the same time and withdrawn the same piece between them.

One had laughed, but the other had blushed, and quickly dropped her hand away, like she had been burned.

Why had she noticed them so particularly? And why think of them now?

“I assumed you realized,” Harry continues, “or I would have said before. I wasn’t trying to hide it.”

“You know,” Emily says slowly. “I think I did know. You never told me outright but…it’s like when you hear a song and you know you’ve heard it before but you can’t remember where.

All you know is that you recognize it. It was like…

I knew you.” She looks up at Harry. A dark curl has fallen across her forehead, a perfect imitation of a question mark. “That sounds absurd.”

“No,” Harry says, and Emily feels the now familiar sunbeam warmth of being caught in her gaze. Or perhaps it’s footlights. Perhaps they are together on a stage, and perhaps it is written in a script that this is the part where they kiss. “It makes sense.”

“Does it?” Emily asks.

Harry smiles. “Perfectly.”

“And everyone in your theatrical company shares your preferences?”

“It’s a qualifier to join.” Harry settles back in her chair again.

“A lady I was bedding when I was nine and ten was one of their patrons and she introduced me to the company manager. I was looking for a way out of my mother’s house and I was a dramatic youth who loved Shakespeare, so it was a good fit at the time. ”

“It must be nice, to be with such women.”

“It’s not a perfect arrangement. Everyone has slept with everyone and someone is always quarreling or refusing to act across from someone else who has slighted them.

Either that or trying to bed each other for preferential role assignments.

But it’s nice not to worry about revealing yourself. You can just…. be.”

“I’d never thought what it might be like to have to hide your desire.”

“It doesn’t usually feel like hiding. I don’t often put much effort into it.

But then I’ll be at a company meeting and hear someone talking openly about some girl they met and are smitten with and realize it’s just…

different. For it to feel ordinary. The Palace was where I first started wearing trousers.

Then I started wearing them everywhere because they felt so much more suited to me. ”

“How did you know you preferred women?” Emily asks. “Have you ever been with a man?”

“A handful. I felt like I had to at first. I grew up around a lot of sex, but it was all between women and men so it was the only sort of intimacy I understood. Then Pearl brought a lady into her house who wore trousers and took both men and women to bed, and she drew me some illuminating diagrams.”

“And bedding men doesn’t disqualify you?” Emily asks. “From being a…” She cannot say the word, now that she knows the meaning. It feels too decadent.

Harry’s mouth quirks. “There’s no test you must pass, you know.

I have never found it unpleasant to sleep with men.

Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s dull.

It is always inferior to even the worst night I’ve spent with a lady.

” She swipes her fork around the edge of her cake plate, then says, “Have you ever considered it?”

Emily’s heart jumps into her throat. The thrill she has felt every time she is around Harry suddenly has a name, and names have power. She knows that from every fairy story of her youth. “Considered what?” she asks, and her voice comes out too high.

When Harry raises her head, their gazes lock. Harry smiles. “Nothing,” she says. “Pay me no mind.”